If you know what’s what in the lineage of Nintendo consoles (Game Boy aside), you know that the word ‘Super’ was robbed of its rightful place in the year 2025. Here’s why.
Old-school Nintenheads and suitably educated youngens know that the iconic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was followed by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) – and whether you pronounced that as “Sness” or “S N E S”, all was largely right with the world.
(I say that so easily now, but I’m certain I can recall a few vicious playground arguments over the merits of Sness v S N E S…)
It’s not often in Nintendo’s history that a post-SNES home console could easily be called a direct successor to its predecessor, in terms of branding or design. Maybe the N64 should’ve been the Ultra NES, and maybe the Gamecube should’ve been the Hyper NES, but we’ll never know how well that would have gone.
No. The post-SNES history we have is that, unlike PlayStation and XBOX generations and their successive numeric names, Nintendo has almost always given its home consoles an entirely new identity with every new release. (The Wii U shall remain forgotten.)
But now we’re in the era of the Switch, which is neither a home console in the traditional sense, nor a purely mobile-first handheld – despite having done a wildly profitable job at both (if not always a convincing one).
So, when Nintendo decided to buck its own history and give the Switch name and look a second outing, fans suddenly found themselves convinced: obviously it should be called the Super Nintendo Switch, just like days of old!
Why, then, did Nintendo rob us of this clear opportunity?
According to an interview on Nintendo’s own website, the team behind the Switch 2 wanted to avoid confusion around backwards compatibility.
You see, the Switch 2 has backwards compatibility with OG Switch games, whereas the SNES was never given the ability to play NES Games – and so the team was concerned that people would assume the Switch 2 is less capable than it actually is.
“We even considered ideas like “Super Nintendo Switch.” However, Super NES (25), which came out after the NES (26), couldn’t play NES games. Since Switch 2 can play Switch games, it didn’t feel right to use the same naming convention as Super NES,” Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamato said.
“Switch 2 is a new system with improved performance, but we’d like players who get their hands on it not to focus on the specs, but rather to think of it as the latest system developed by Nintendo.”
Listen, it feels like a huge miss to me, but hey. It’s not like the thing ain’t gonna sell.
Maybe I can make a Super Nintendo Switch sticker for the dock and backplate…
Short link: realcool.co/superswitch
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